Saturday, November 12, 2011

This may be the most ludicrous New York Times Op-Ed I've read in years: Sell out Taiwan in exchange for China forgiving $1.1 trillion in debt!

There are dozens of initiatives President Obama could undertake to strengthen our economic security. Here is one: He should enter into closed-door negotiations with Chinese leaders to write off the $1.14 trillion of American debt currently held by China in exchange for a deal to end American military assistance and arms sales to Taiwan and terminate the current United States-Taiwan defense arrangement by 2015.

This would be a most precious prize to the cautious men in Beijing, one they would give dearly to achieve. After all, our relationship with Taiwan, as revised in 1979, is a vestige of the cold war.

Wow. As if abandoning our allies and strategic commitments without cause or explanation weren't abhorrent enough, to suggest doing so in exchange for cash fundamentally demeans our country's values and ideals. (Imagine if he'd suggested selling Israel in exchange for a trillion in free oil?)

Ironically, the writer, Paul Kane, is an Iraq War vet. Thanks for your service, Mr. Kane, but you learned the wrong lesson from that misguided adventure....which will have cost us three times your bargain-label price for Taiwan by the time we finally leave.